TVR Speed Six

The Speed Six is TVR’s straight-six, also designed in-house. It replaced the AJP8 as TVR’s primary engine in their later production line-up.

Spec at a glance

• Configuration: inline 6-cylinder
• Capacities: 3.6 L, 3.9 L, 4.0 L variants
• Power: roughly 350 bhp to 400+ bhp depending on tune
• Construction: aluminium block and heads, dry sump in race tune
• Cars: Cerbera (late), Tuscan, Sagaris, T350, Tamora

Known weak spots

• Finger followers — the most documented Speed Six weakness. Wear causes valvetrain noise and eventually damage. Many Speed Six engines have been rebuilt for this reason.
• Oil supply to the head — related to follower wear; oil starvation under hard use accelerates the failure.
• Cam pulley / chain tensioner — high-mileage cars are worth inspecting.

Cerbera-specific note

Late-production Cerberas were fitted with the Speed Six instead of the AJP8. Visually, the easiest tell is the quad headlamp arrangement on later cars (early V8 Cerberas had a single 7-inch headlamp per side under a clear cover).

This is the styling cue people retrofit when they convert an early V8 Cerbera to “look like a Speed Six”. See Quad headlamp conversion.